Work in Progress
by The RyRy
Summary: What stories would Leliana tell of our adventures? Of Alistair... and me?  f!Warden/Alistair, Leliana, Zevran


Work in Progress

(Contrary to the implications of the title, this fanfiction story is complete.)

Sometimes, Alistair talked in his sleep.

I wondered if I was the first person to know this, or if his comrades in the Grey Warden barracks had heard him before me. Perhaps even the templars, or those from his youth in Redcliff had heard his strained voice, his words that betrayed the turmoil within.

Wardens dream of the darkspawn, and of the archdemon. This I knew intimately, having had these figures haunt my nights since that fateful day that I drank the blood and took my oath. It had been worse since the slaughter at Ostagar, as if the screams of all the Wardens who came before me echoed in every corner of my dream's architecture.

Alistair was the only one left who understood. That understanding brought me to his arms as the pleadings of the dead and the screams of the archdemon unnerved me, made me frightened of the fire. "I was too," he whispered comfortingly in my ear. He was my only stronghold in the entire world, and for better or worse, I loved him for it.

For him, perhaps, I was the last woman on the planet. We had become a different breed, he and I, when we became Wardens. Maybe that accounted for his attraction to me. My elven lineage did not matter to him, and to me… well. His human nature bothered me sometimes, but he was something other than human. Something more, something greater, but something that whimpered in the night with fears that only those closest to him could glimpse.

The cold of the Frostback Mountains forced me close to the fire, although it still reminded me all too much of the memory of the archdemon in my dreams . Absently, I wondered what demons Alistair dreamed of in the night, trying to distract myself by looking through my journal of recent events. As always happened, somehow, I opened the page to the place where I had gently pressed a simple red rose.

Alistair's rose. I wanted to keep it forever, and so as the edges of the leaves turned yellow and brown, I stayed up late one night carefully pressing it between two blank pages of my journal. The red color from the petals had marked the pages in an intricate pattern, and I gently ran my fingernail along them, thinking of the way he had presented the flower to me. I had teased him gently, trying to defuse his awkwardness, which had only made him blush and stumble on his words…

"He talks again, doesn't he?"

I looked up at Leliana, who was sitting down next to me by the fire. I nodded at her, looking back down at my fingertip tracing the outline of the rose.

"This is the third night in a row," she observed. Two nights ago, she had found me out here writing frantic streams of words, and had been concerned. I liked Leliana, and trusted her – some may have thought her crazy with her visions and mission from the Maker, but I could understand.

"He is troubled," I confided in her.

"About what Arl Eamon asked of him, I bet," Leliana suggested.

I shook my head. "He doesn't want it. He doesn't want the throne, or anything to do with it."

"But he must, you understand," she said, tracing patterns in the dust next to her right foot. "How could anyone not like Alistair? If he were in charge, he could gather everyone to stop the Blight."

"He would be tied up in royal affairs," I said, recalling one of Alistair's midnight mumblings. _Why must I stay here? Only I can fight. Only I can—and her. _"I need him."

"To fight?" Leliana asked, then turned her head to look at me. "Or to love?"

"Both," I admitted. "Contrary to popular belief, I have no idea what I'm doing. I don't know how to fight an archdemon. I barely even know what it means to be a Grey Warden. The only thing that has kept me going…"

"I think _you _are the only thing keeping _him _going," Leliana said with a smile. "He really loves you. Oh, it's like something out of a love story! The handsome chevalier, and his lady… except in this story, the lady is also a chevalier!"

I eyed her carefully. "Do you have stories like that from Orlais?"

"Romances? Oh, plenty!" She grinned at me. "But none like this. Doomed to die an early death, the last two Wardens in a hopeless war, one of them a royal bastard and the other an elven mage! What stories I could tell."

"Oh please, do tell," said another voice, Zevran's, from the other side of the fire. He looked at me apologetically. "Please, excuse me. I could not sleep, it is so cold, and I heard you two talking."

Leliana looked at me as if asking for permission. I sighed, but she seemed so excited that I had a hard time telling her no. "You can tell me what to change," she said with a bright grin.

"Make sure to include something about the handsome assassin," Zevran chimed in.

"Of course!" Leliana said, waving her hand at him. "How could I leave you out?"

The fire flickered and sent shadows across her face as Leliana hummed to herself. "Well," she began, "this is a story without an end. Please forgive me if it is incomplete, but you can be assured that I will tell you the rest once the story plays out."

She closed her eyes, appearing to be thinking for a moment, then continued.

"This is the story of the Templar Grey Warden of Ferelden. It was his task to save the land from the Blight, accompanied only by a company of misfits!" She giggled. "With him, he had a wild apostate witch of the Wilds, an odd-tempered Mabari, a handsome elven assassin, a Qunari mercenary warrior, an elderly healer-mage, and a lowly bard. By a stroke of luck, he also had with him another Grey Warden – a newly-initiated mage-elf who was untested in the ways of the order. In another life, these two Wardens – the last two in all of Ferelden after the treacherous slaughter of the Wardens at Ostagar – would have had a much different relationship. He would have been her keeper, her protector, or her hunter; if she had no magical inclinations, she may have even been his servant! But there they were, together, the last defenses against the evils of the darkspawn and the archdemon.

"Together, the two Wardens traveled the land with their company. They had to unite the war-torn land, convince kings and princes to come to their aid, and stave off the attacks of their enemies and the nightmares that plagued their sleeping time. The Templar-Warden was a humorous one, awkward in his speeches but good-hearted and sincere. His shield protected the others from harm, and although he often suffered grievous injuries, he never lost his optimism and tireless charm.

"In Lothering, before it was overrun by the darkspawn, he found a single red rose growing in the dirty ground and dying grass. Looking at the flower, he was overcome with a realization – amidst the terrors of the days fighting darkspawn and the horrors of the archdemon's invasion of his subconscious at night, there was one beautiful spot in his life – other than his painted shield of Redcliff!

"He plucked the flower from where it grew, rescuing it from the darkness that would soon overcome it, and took it with him on his journeys. He kept it in a safe spot – some say he fastened it inside of his shield where none could touch it – and sometimes stared longingly at it during the cold, lonely nights—"

"What a work of fiction!" came a familiar voice from behind me.

"Who says, Alistair?" Leliana said, grinning up at him.

He sat down beside me, resting his elbow on his knee. "I do," he said somewhat dramatically. "A rose? On the inside of a shield? What if one of the thorns got in my eye in the middle of things? That would just be unnecessarily messy."

Leliana laughed, and I couldn't help but to join her. "Well, where did you keep it, then?" she asked.

"Keep what?" Alistair replied.

"The _rose_, silly!"

Alistair put his hand to his chest, feigning innocence. "Me? Be so sentimental? You must be mistaken. I am a hardened Grey Warden, we don't have time for such silliness." The way he smiled at me betrayed the real truth.

"Sentimentality is a good trait to have in a leader," Leliana said to him after a short chuckle. "It makes you delightful."

"There you go again. Practicing for your storytelling?" Alistair subtly rested his elbow against my shoulder.

"As a matter of fact," Zevran joined in, "I think she was just about to get to the part about the handsome assassin, a member of the Antivan Crows, so dashing and attractive that none of the ladies – or gentlemen – could resist him." He glanced suggestively at Alistair.

"What do you think, Alistair?" I said, looking over my shoulder into his handsome face. I realized, quite suddenly, that I found him to be very attractive, despite being human. Maybe it was _because _he was human… just as Leliana said, had I been only a Circle mage and he a templar, or even me a city elf and him a common human, he would have been untouchable. And here he was, touching my shoulder and smiling at me. To cover for my sudden realization, I quickly continued, "Could you resist Zevran?"

Alistair narrowed his eyes and looked over at Zevran. "Hmm," he said, feigning deep thought. "Depends. Does he have a dagger to my throat?"

"Ah, you break my heart!" Zevran sighed, causing Leliana to giggle. "Are my charms not enough, that you would need such coercive techniques?"

"This will be my next tale," Leliana said. "The story of the handsome assassin and his unrequited love for the Templar-Warden—"

"I like the first one better," Alistair said so flatly that I couldn't help but to laugh.

Looking at him, I suddenly knew what it was that haunted him at night. It was the knowledge that nights like these would come to an end; no longer would he be able to sit around a campfire with his companions, telling stories and laughing. No longer would he be just Alistair, but he would be… what? The king? The usurper? The bastard? The target?

And who would I be?

I leaned into his touch, uncertain of how much longer I had to enjoy him as he was, before he changed forever.


End file.
